<p>Phew good thing you didn’t /thread or else I wouldn’t have been able to respond! 
Isn’t the purpose of a word to symbolize a concept? Defining a word with other words is like drawing a mental map to the concept. I would think language is a medium by which humans CAN argue, where it is not otherwise possible to do so.</p>
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Sorry bout that, LogicWarrior!</p>
<p>Wow that’s the interesting theory. All arguments rely on postulates to some extent (right?) and I can see how if two people had slightly differing interpretation of a word(s), they could argue completely different things. Interesting theory.</p>
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“The sky is green.”
“The moon is made of mozzarella cheese.”
“The circumference of a circle of radius 1 is 8.”</p>
<p>These are perfectly valid assumptions in logic but not in everyday reasoning (well, rigorous definitions aside anyway). Formal logic allows you to prove theorems from axioms and definitions. It is concerned with proof and disproof (contradictions) and the activity of formal deductions, not reasoning of the sort “X is probably true because it has been true in all 1000 observed instances.” In short, formal logic does not care about your perception of the world or the world at all - our state of affairs is coincidential, not logical necessity.</p>
<p>That’s about as much as I can say without diving into symbolic logic or philosophy.</p>
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<p>Oh. my. gawd. My views are totally represented by b@r!um…I’m speaking of logic in the sense of inconsistency, yes. Same as any logician would view it, same as any mathematician or philosopher would view it.</p>
<p>I think what people need to realize is that bringing religion to a contradiction generally is a matter of making convenient assumptions bringing it to collapse. This is neat and tidy to do and you can be cute and pat yourself on the back, but the fact of the matter is there are people who derive meaningful existences from the framework of religions AND understand logic so that they do not believe in inconsistencies. If you want to be enlightened as to how these people derive the meaning, go talk to them. It’s easy to specify a collection of simplistic axioms and show they lead to bunk…any idiot can do that. </p>
<p>There are aspects of religion that rely on paradox in order to evoke a sensation in the followers, and to confuse this with logical inconsistency is again silly, because paradox is a linguistic phenomenon. It isn’t a bunch of idiots saying “A and NOT A both true simultaneously” – it’s observing a subtlety in choice of language in relation to what effects the word choices are traditionally vs. unconventionally to evoke. That’s sort of the whole point.</p>
<p>can you guys stop being nerds.</p>
<p>manhattan and i answered the question 5 pages ago.</p>
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I’ll take that as a “Please don’t speak for me.” (sorry, i’m a bit slow today) Time for me to shut up.</p>
<p>And I would say that any argument that involves “evidence” is inherently probabilistic and thus can’t constitute formal proof.</p>
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<p>no you guys didn’t.</p>
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<p>case in point: this thread. this thread is hilarious . . .</p>
<p>No, no b@r!um I meant it sincerely, you covered everything I had to say. </p>
<p>My “oh my gawd” was in exasperation that this whole discussion came down to people misunderstanding what folks like you and I defined logic to be.</p>
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<p>That is totally incompatible with any claim of omnipotence this God has.</p>
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<p>DID TO</p>
<p>this has spun off into a dicking contest for who can be the nerdiest nerd in the realm of “mathematical logic”.</p>
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<p>no it isn’t. being all powerful doesn’t mean that you can do things that don’t make sense. god can’t create a ‘married bachelor’ even though he’s god. he also can’t create a rock so big that even he can’t lift it (or roll a doobie so big that he can’t even smoke it, etc . . .). </p>
<p>you can assign words to those things, but that doesn’t mean that you are talking about something meaningful.</p>
<p>I think I’ve made my point about religion and logic clear, so I’m going to make an attempt to answer the real question of this thread, which is a good one.</p>
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<p>I am under the impression that it is partially because this system feeds on itself. People who never went through formal logic training don’t see the value. People who have never seen what mathematics is think it’s a bunch of “theory” and think “why study it” when the objects under consideration, if understood, are often totally natural things. </p>
<p>Anyone I know who went through some logic training agreed that it gave them a lot of perspective to try to be precise, and helped them with other things, such as clarity of writing. Someone I know who wants to teach English actually wanted to include a unit on logic at the beginning. </p>
<p>I think an issue is that formal logic, when you first learn it and are made to focus on the mechanical side of writing things down precisely, is actually boring, and it’s when you actively practice formal logical reasoning that it becomes a means of introducing additional precision. When people view mathematical proofs as neat ways of expressing formal reasoning, * they fail to see the real point of the clean language, which is to maintain a means of communicating in a manner free of inconsistency, so that anyone reading the material is able to derive the same meaning. * Such a thing is really important when the ideas spiral out of control in how immensely complex they become, so as to boggle anyone’s mind. This language becomes second nature to those who practice it, and we’re actually more concerned with the ideas presented…and so can it be with letting formal logic guide our communication of everyday intuitions (which abound, and constitute many of the “interesting” things we say).</p>
<p>Of course, when theories become highly intricate, logic can also be powerful in assessing the scope of their answering certain questions. It’s a great sanity check. </p>
<p>Sorry for those who’re exasperated, I’m still laboring under your so-called “super-nerd” definition of the term “logic.”</p>
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Here is where things went wrong. Religious beliefs are not axioms (from the best that I can tell), because they are not considered universally true. It is not appropriate to pick them as a starting point.</p>
<p>What I’ve been saying is not that religious beliefs are logical fallacies; I’m saying that the act of believing in (read: assuming true) the religious belief is the logical fallacy. You’re right to say that they start committing the fallacies when challenged to defend their beliefs. That is exactly my point. If they were taught logic in the first place, they wouldn’t have made the mistake of assuming truth from a logical fallacy (I hope).</p>
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<p>When I say common sense is synonymous with logic, it’s because my common sense can be justified with logical proofs. It also is probably because common sense is subjective. One person’s common sense might be that if most people believe it, it’s right. I know that’s flawed logic, so I wouldn’t make that common sense assumption. I’m not talking about common sense logic. There is no reason for a class to teach such a thing.</p>
<p>@mathboy98
You addressed my question appropriately. Were you still making the distinction that I was referring to common sense logic (not formal logic) this whole time?</p>
<p>Glad I made some sense !
When I say “logic,” I always mean in the sense of formal logic, and a violation means exactly inconsistency.</p>
<p>I guess it is possible for people to start with false assumptions when it comes to religion, though I think those are exactly the people who’re abusing religion fundamentally. I definitely agree that even if a system of beliefs is logically consistent based on certain assumptions, the assumptions themselves could be false. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, my understanding is that those who derive meaning from religion effectively realize that any system of logical intricacy we study arises from certain assumptions, and these assumptions are generally consciously made based on some value. That value could be valuing raw physical observation, it could be valuing mathematical consistency, etc. For instance, I believe one of the attractive things about string theory in physics is the mathematical consistency, and the fact one can state assumptions down clearly, in a possible attempt to find meaningful things about the link between quantum and classical physical worlds. The nice thing about stating your assumptions precisely is that when you ultimately create your theory, assuming you were careful, findings you have eventually may let you relax your assumptions, and still have very meaningful discoveries. </p>
<p>What is often understated when people study things like mathematics, supposedly an incredibly precise field, is that it ultimately rests on what types of thought people value undertaking. And so, while the system is consistent, that people apply a certain line of thinking may or may not be productive towards so and so individual’s goal. There is also conjecture-based mathematics, which develops theories based on an assumption which MAY be true, because intuition says it is…whether or not the assumption ends up being true, people derive meaning from the discoveries made, because it tells them where a certain intuitive line of reasoning goes. </p>
<p>Which is why it is ultimately very important to be able to explain why what you are studying is so natural to you, whether it be in philosophy, mathematics, physics, or religion. Not everyone is great at doing this for themselves, but hopefully someone else can articulate it best.</p>
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<p>well, that’s just your opinion man.</p>
<p>so your problem with religion is the premises they start off with, not how they reason from them. logic doesn’t help you pick premises. mandating that all hs students take an intro. course in logic isn’t going to turn people away from religion, unfortunately for you</p>
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<p>Well, it depends what they are believing. I think the proper way to put it is there are very few things we can truly say we can believe to be true – only things we can assume, and hopefully reasonably explain why we assume, and then derive meaning from the string of logically consistent products. </p>
<p>The way I would go about it is be able to state your assumptions VERY CLEARLY and acknowledge that they are assumptions. Usually those philosophies which advocate a certain way of living take a tautology and assign some meaning to it.</p>
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<p>This is where I have a big, big problem. Axioms can derive from many things, and can be disputed in almost any case, even axioms which are the premise of physically based arguments. </p>
<p>I emphasize that one must be able to state the assumptions and then derive meaning. </p>
<p>The term “common sense” introduces imprecision, and it’s a whole new debate. Logic classes do not teach you common sense, nor what to accept as true, they teach you the precise science of proceeding from assumptions and seeing what can be stated in a consistent language. </p>
<p>Some philosophers are of the opinion that it is their burden to clarify the different uses of language, so as to emphasize the meaning that can be derived from various statements and terminologies, since this is a whole new dimension of thought. What assumptions are implicit to the use of certain terminology, for instance. I think this sort of thinking is valuable too, if that’s what you’re getting at. </p>
<p>Again, I think this is the study of language, philosophy, etc, NOT logic by my use of terminology.</p>
<p>b@r!um, remind me why we started studying mathematics and logic again…</p>
<p><em>sighs</em></p>
<p>:)</p>